On The Athletic prior to the SMJHL Draft, we posted an analysis of each team's major needs and focused on their potential draft strategies. Now that we've made it through the hectic day where lives are changed, we get to take a look back and focus on the future of each of these franchises. Over the course of the next few days, we'll be looking at each team individually that we profiled before en masse to get a better idea of them as a team.
Of course, we'll be going in reverse order of our list from earlier this week. We continue our run into the latter half of the league with a look into the team who made the most draft picks, the Colorado Raptors.
THE DRAFT
9 -- Philipp Winter, LW 14 -- Ignatius Blunt, LW 19 -- Nate Forsberg, RW 30 -- Alex Winters, RW 33 -- Tony Pepperoni, LW 38 -- Zakhar Turakov, LW 46 -- Andrew Martin, RW 53 -- Tye Maximino, RW 54 – Jake Reid, D 61 -- Sulak O'Hritea, RW 62 -- Derek Deffner, RW 65 -- Gvidas Kazlauskas, LW 70 -- Preston Wreiss, D 78 -- Pakko Pelai, D 86 -- Brando Sando, G
NEEDS: Scoring Forwards, Depth All Around
Holy mackerel!
Colorado absolutely saw something that other teams may not have seen. Either they had a feeling this draft was going to yield an unusually high amount of top players, or they realized they had a bigger need than those of us on the outside realized. From the outside it appeared they were in line to draft Max Mauldin, who had requested to play in Colorado early in the process, and were going to target a couple centers for depth. They would have a high-scoring base from there. Things had changed greatly early in the day, however and the Raptors received intel revealing they wouldn't be receiving Mauldin, in fact. From there, they started working the phones – hard. To the point, if it were a rotary, there would've been a fire on the draft floor. Luckily, there wasn't and everything was fine.
Trading the fourth overall selection to move back to nine and gain two other selections in the draft, Colorado showed their hand and it turned out to be a Royal Flush. The team made out with Philipp Winter, of relation to Nicolas Winter, a superstar in the making if it's to be believed he'll be anything like the Winter family. They also gained Ignatius Blunt and Nate Forsberg in the first 20 picks, immediately setting the tone and grabbing three players that The Athletic absolutely adores.
From there, the Raptors had some interesting decision-making. One would expect with only two true centers on the roster, you would target a center in the draft. It appears Colorado has a strict best player available policy instead, and doesn't focus on team need. As such, they drafted six right wings, five left wings, three defensemen and a goaltender. They did not address one potential team need, which is a black mark on this draft, but with a haul like this, it's possible to say they don't really need to worry about the face-off portion of the game.
They did have a similar strategy to the team we profiled just prior to them as well, St. Louis, in that their first defenseman selected wasn't until pick 54. They picked three in total, however they are a team heading into the season with one of the strongest defensive corps featuring Kevin Maddox (Note: Maddox has recently been announced as traded), Maui, Sachimo Zoidberg Jr and Nico Wallner. With limited space available on the back end, they made a wise and conscious decision to target scoring and offensive capabilities early in the draft.
*This list was made prior to any trades involving the Kelowna Knights and Colorado Raptors, thus including players on Colorado who will instead by playing in Kelowna.
NAME = Player in Last Season of Eligibility
NAME = Rookie Player
As has been noted earlier, there's a clear strong point in defense and a clear weakness in centers. With a massive amount of depth now available on the wing, it appears the Raptors have decided on a strategy of collapsing onto the middle of the ice and working their way outward and around the boards. They'll be a board play heavy team, with their wings playing a heavy forecheck and the defense being instructed to pinch often. They have one of the stronger goaltenders in the league this season in Crawfling, and will rely on him in odd-man situations in order to play aggressively and outnumber their opponents.
The aggressive behavior showing in training camp gives a sign that Colorado will be a very heavy attacking team and likely a higher scoring team. As a team going in with limited scorers, heavily relying on Cash Savage for next season, it's a harsh turnaround from the expectation heading into the draft. This is going to be a team that is back-and-forth, fast-paced action. There will likely be a few odd-man rushes going the other way, but they'll manage to make them pay for committing too hard on it as long as Crawfling is able to bail them out more often than not. It's a smart bet from the looks of things, and one the Colorado staff is willing to take.
With a rumor beginning to arise as I write this article of Colorado making a move with the Kelowna Knights, it appears this is going to be an up and down season for Colorado. I would expect them to be a middling team from the outset, but it's possible their offense being so fresh-faced that they struggle in the early goings. If enough teams struggle and are having to challenge the strong defense of Colorado, however, it's entirely possible they maintain a very strong record early on. I'm betting on Colorado making playoffs this season, being a fourth place team.
The Raptors are one of the more interesting teams to predict for next season. They have the ability to be easily in the playoffs or struggle mightily and fall to the outside. Coming up next, we're going to review the last of my guaranteed top-three teams alongside Kelowna and Montreal next season – the Vancouver Whalers.
Quote:Word Count: 1190. Step 2 of Double Pay Week, team by team reviews. 5/8 down.
Getting a lot of positive feedback on this, I greatly appreciate it everyone. Last three teams are getting posted tomorrow!
An old man's dream ended. A young man's vision of the future opened wide. Young men have visions, old men have dreams. But the place for old men to dream is beside the fire.
JayWhy![[Image: SMJHL-Raptors.png]](http://www.simulationhockey.com/images/SMJHL-Raptors.png)
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S56 1st Overall ![[Image: CsnVET2.png]](https://i.imgur.com/CsnVET2.png)
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